From the day of its release Microsoft’s SharePoint has been actively productive in making many enterprises reach the height of success of today. But with every popular product there remains the concern of the security. Even if SharePoint has brings with it a host of several features, how can you be assured of taking most benefit of them remains in the way you take complete control of your website’s/data-base’s security.

SharePoint: the growing Kingdom

According to BuiltWith, around 28291 websites (from the list of top 1 million websites available on the web) are there that use Microsoft Office SharePoint. This is as of January 2014 and this number has kept on increasing every day. The prime reason behind the mass dominance of SharePoint has been attributed to that fact that it offers one of the most solid document management supports. This is the reason why among the SharePoint uses globally more than 80% users use it for this feature only. But then, if managing documents is a need, having a secure document management system in place is a necessity!

How to stay safe in the kingdom

With so much data, there comes great responsibility - and here raises the question whether SharePoint has the capacity to deliver as a safe platform. There are many areas which needs the attention of users too while using SharePoint for the ultimate security effect as just hiring a fine SharePoint development company India would just entitle one of a robust system integration, but responsibilities of users are also there. There are few points by keeping an eye over which SharePoint Development would be a pleasant experience. A survey by cryptzone revels various startling facts like 92% of users realize that taking out data from SharePoint makes it vulnerable to theft. 34% never actually gave a thought about the security part of SharePoint and other meager 13% didn’t bother to think about security of company’s data. This makes it more essential to cover all the holes in the process for strengthening security of SharePoint. Following parts needs to be overviewed to have a strong security.

1. Strong security training must. Very less people realizes that removing some data outside of SharePoint makes the data vulnerable and they actually don’t care much. This calls for security training of the users by organization.

2. Information Sharing Barrier Implementation. People often use their pen drive to share data outside of SharePoint or even mail to someone outside of SharePoint cloud coverage, all these must be averted as information going out of the fixed barrier is security breach.

3. Allocate security guarding authority. Most of the management is often not sure about who should be the key personal for ensuring the security measures protection. This needs to the fixed as it’s not just the duty of IT administrator, but also of users, developers and admin.

4. Restrict access rights. In SharePoint too much access is given to the end-user and this has to be averted through customization of the module. This creates a much needed layer of protection.

5. Secret Stalkers. SharePoint administrators have been often seen sneaking into organization data’s like salary, attendance of others etc. This also triggers a security breech and needs to be avoided.

6. It’s all open there. SharePoint's SQL database is unencrypted and often people don’t encrypt the same as it affects performance of the system but in the guidance of an authority SharePoint developer you must encrypt the whole.

7. Poor indexing setting flaw. One must avoid poor indexing setting owing to which search result shows more than intended. Even though the documents could not be opened, still a small preview is available. This has to be avoided at mass level.

8. Pay attention to maintenance. Most of the businesses do not pay attention in server maintenance and updating resulting in poor performance. One must patch Microsoft IIS on routine basis for staying safe.

9. Strengthen endpoint security. SharePoint Workspaces lets users to coordinate with SharePoint libraries for getting access to all the contents in SharePoint offline which is too dangerous. This has to be restricted for optimizing the security.

10. Check every file for viruses. A single corrupted file can affect the whole library and so it has to be a mandatory practice for checking each and every file before uploading to library.

Make sure to keep a note on all above points as your information is your property and so it’s your duty to strengthen the locks to protect the house.

Author: Vikas Kumar Sinha

The author has produced & edited several articles and related informative material for a range of genres including web design & development, software development, Internet marketing etc. He likes to create informative content to educate readers regarding the current tech trends while remaining engaged in a host of online promotional activities for his organization.